Christmas Break (II)

Monday. Mom, Grandma, Aunt Teri and I returned home. At 4:30 I drove to Cincinnati, and Karen and I went out to dinner at The Anchor, and then we went to Knob Hill to smoke. Karen said, “The skyline is NOTHING like Vegas.” It was good to see her, and I’m glad we’re friends. When I got home at 11:00 Ams praised my new coat: “Oh my gosh! You look so good! I thought you were skinny when you walked in the door!” Thanks, Ams. “I didn’t mean it like that, Anth.”

Tuesday. Mom & Aunt Teri went to Lowe’s to buy goodies to build Mom’s new laundry room in the garage. Mom, Grandma, Aunt Teri, Ams and I went to China Garden for lunch. Ams and I went to Starbucks, and I had an iced latte. I was supposed to go see Sarah, but that fell through. I’ll see her on Thursday, though. Mom made spaghetti for dinner. I ate too much and felt stuffed. I spent the night chatting online with Jessie, about everything and nothing, and I’m almost done with her Christmas present: a photo-shopped picture of the two of us. She’s a warrior princess and I’m the wolf at her loins! Weird, I know.

New Year’s Eve. Wal-Mart wouldn’t print my photo-shopped pictures, something about copyright infringement, so I printed them out and got frames for them. Grandma went north to visit her sister, replaced by Uncle Bill. Monica called me, and we talked for a while. We went out to eat at Lone Star Steakhouse, and then Anna came over. I took them to Kroger and bought them some mango rum so they could celebrate the night away. Uncle Bill made margaritas, and Aunt Teri brought some Absolut vodka.

New Year’s Day. Courtney’s getting married this year. In October, to be precise. That should be ME marrying her. I never thought I’d feel for a girl like I felt for Julie; and then I met Courtney. I never thought I’d hurt like I hurt for Julie; and then I lost Courtney. Now I get to watch Courtney marry someone else. Now I get to watch my dreams given to another. The cigarette in my fingers; the vodka burning in my throat. The only escape. It’s not so much losing Courtney that aches. She’s kind of a bitch. It’s watching my dreams slide away.

Thursday. I talked with Jessie until 2 AM last night. We talked about a lot, but mostly about Justin V. For the past several weeks, he’s been flirting with her. And Jessie would flirt with him. She said he is someone she could see herself dating. The problem is, he has a girlfriend in Indianapolis. Last night he told Jessie that they’re probably breaking up. Jessie was freaking out, because she doesn’t want to be a home-wrecker. This afternoon Ams and I went to see Sarah. She really liked my Christmas gift to her. We ate lunch at McDonald’s and then went to Barnes & Noble. She’s stuck with Keith for just another three months (the apartment lease expires in March) and then she’ll be moving to Hamilton to live with her mom for a few months. The plan is for her to move into an apartment with Ams and me in August. When Ams and I got back, I went to Starbucks and met up with Dylan & Tyler there. We drank coffee and then went back to my place for a while. They’re both graduating in May. Tyler’s planning on moving to Atlanta, and Dylan wants to move to Dry Ridge, Kentucky this coming August.

Friday. I spent most of the day working on Dwellers of the Night. Hopefully I’ll have the trilogy done by the end of the month. I drank five cups of coffee, and thus spent much of the day pissing and jittery from all the caffeine. The family grabbed dinner at Marion’s Pizza, and then Dylan & Tyler came over. We hung out, shared laughs, watched TV, had a great time. One of my high school friends, Stephen H., was on Dateline’s “To Catch A Predator.” He’s doing 15-20 years in jail. What a wasted life, all because of one stupid and evil decision. Oh: Jessica Black, another high school friend, got pregnant and OD’d on heroine to commit suicide.

Saturday. I missed Courtney a lot today, or at least what we had: the joy, the happiness, the hope, the future. It’s slowly sinking in that she’s getting married this year. Her dreams were handed to her on a silver platter, right off the grill; and mine were stamped underfoot by the Chef. Oh, I know it’s not true. God isn’t mean like that. He wants me to be happy, and He genuinely cares for me. It’s just… the suffering I’ve endured since May of 2007 has been suffocating, and it’s turned me into a miserable, burnt-out creature, cold and bitter and calloused. Empty. Desiring change and hope. I’m working on it. My “fall from Joy” didn’t happen in a day, and just like Rome’s construction, my restoration won’t happen overnight, either. With God’s help, what was a cottage before will become a towering palace with porticoes, courtyards, rotundas, and parapets. Maybe even some hanging gardens!

Sunday. Uncle Bill and Aunt Teri spent the night last night and left this afternoon. I woke up for a cup of stale coconut coffee. I spent much of the day playing Flight Simulator 2004. I spent an hour and a half flying from California to Las Vegas. Flying over the mountains was beautiful. I packed my bags and headed down to Cincinnati. It’s nice to be back. It rained constantly. I hung out with Kyle for a while, and then Hensel and I went to The Anchor for dinner.

last-minute break contemplations

My break is over, and it has been good. I wrote sixty pages in Dwellers of the Night, got to spend time with my extended family, and even got to see my old friends Dylan and Tyler. “Old Friends.” It’s a strange phrase. If taken literally, it means a friend who is old in years, or someone whom you used to be friends with but with whom you’ve grown apart. Yet in our language, it means a friend who has been a friend so long that even after months and even years or even decades of not seeing one another, the friendship is just as solid and open and care-free as it was since the beginning. That’s how my friendship with Dylan and Tyler has been, and I am confident that even if we don’t see each other for a decade, and we end up meeting up at a bar or something, we’ll still be able to reminisce on the old times and be able to make new, laugh-filled memories. In Proverbs it says, “A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” Dylan and Tyler are this type of friend.

As mentioned, my break is over. I am taking two week-long intensive classes preceding the actual beginning of the spring semester on January 20th. These classes are “Job and Lamentations” and “Prayer and Spirituality.” I don’t know what the second class will be like, but I know that the first is really a study in theodicy: “How do we reconcile suffering with a righteous God?” I was reading Eugene Peterson the other day, and something he wrote stuck out to me:

The biblical revelation neither explains nor eliminates suffering. It shows, rather, God entering into the life of suffering humanity, accepting and sharing the suffering. Scripture is not a lecture from God, pointing the finger at unfortunate sufferers and saying, ‘I told you so: here and here and here is where you went wrong; now you are paying for it.” Nor is it a program from God providing, step by step, for the gradual elimination of suffering in a series of five-year plans (or, on a grander scale, dispensations). There is no progress from more or less suffering from Egyptian bondage to wilderness wandering, to kingless anarchy, to Assyrian siege, to Babylonian captivity, to Roman crucifixion, to Neronian/Domitian holocaust. The suffering is there, and where the sufferer is, God is.

(Living the Message, pages 134-135)

In my journal a few days ago, I wrote: “I miss ----- a lot today. Well, I missed what we had: the joy, the happiness, the hope, the future. It’s slowly sinking in that I will never be with her. Her dreams were handed to her on a silver platter, right off the grill; and mine were seemingly stomped underfoot by the Chef. Oh, I know it’s not true. God isn’t mean like that. He isn’t finding joy in my suffering. He wants me to be happy, and He genuinely cares for me. It’s just… the suffering I’ve endured since May 2006 till now—nearly three years of constant, unending, unbroken suffering—has been suffocating, and it’s turned me into a miserable, burnt-out creature, cold and calloused and bitter and empty, desiring change and hope. I’m working on it. I’m working on it physically, emotionally, spiritually. I’m trying to surmount the bases. My ‘Fall from Joy’ didn’t happen in a day, and just like Rome’s construction, my restoration won’t take place in a day. Brick by brick, stone by stone, I am rebuilding my life. With God’s help, what was a mere cottage before will become a towering palace with porticoes, courtyards, rotundas, and parapets. Maybe even some hanging gardens!”

an update

As this is the first post of the new year, let me give a little update on my life.

I am graduating college in December of 2009. I’ll be graduating, then, with five semesters under my belt. At first I was sad that I would not be graduating on time, but then I saw the beauty of it. I have no idea regarding what I want to actually do with my degree, and another semester will give me more time to figure that out. I only have two classes to take fall semester—well, maybe three—and then I plan on getting my Master’s in New Testament Studies, with an emphasis in Pauline literature.

I am moving into an apartment in August. My sister is transferring to U.C. from Anderson University, and we will be getting an apartment together. My good friend Sarah will be rooming with us. It should be a pretty good time; we’re all really great friends, and it will be nice to get out of the dorm and have my own (shared) place.

I am single again. I broke up with my last girlfriend in early September. For reasons I do not wish to specify, it just was not going to work out. I am content being single—“Your profits just doubled,” my friend Tyler told me—and I am in no rush to get into a relationship. For once in my life, I realize that I am only 21, that there’s no reason to jump headfirst into marriage. Sometimes being single does suck, because the Creator has wired us as relational creatures who yearn for romantic involvement with a member of the opposite sex; loneliness is a big deal, but I am slowly conquering it.

The first girl I ever loved—Courtney; you can read some of the posts about her back in April-May 2007—is getting married in October. That’s kinda weird, to be sure, especially since I thought I would be marrying her. Stranger things have happened, though.

I have been writing a novel—Dwellers of the Night—and am nearly done with it. It is currently at 630 pages, and it will be around 800 pages when it is completed. I’ve been working on it since December of 2007. Only 170 pages to go, and it should be an excellent book. After that, I may stop writing for a while, or I may go on to another book idea: In Memoriam: Infractus Fatum.

I am getting caught-up in a new trend in Pauline studies, "The New Perspective of Paul." It challenges many of the traditional "Lutheran" interpretations of Paul, and my fascination in particular lies with the identity of "works of the law" and the meaning of "justification by faith." It is extremely interesting, and I will probably make a few posts regarding it in the future.

it is hope that keeps us alive

There was a time in my life when I was suicidal.

I remember standing on a bridge over the Ohio River, wanting to throw myself off.

I remember staring at that inky black water that refused to reflect even the full moon’s radiance.

I remember wanting nothing more than to leap, to feel the wind, to feel the water… and then to feel nothing. Hope is a beautiful and dangerous and wonderful and painful thing.

I have always been fond of describing hope this way: “Hope is like barbed wire: the tighter you hold on, the more painful it gets.”

What is the function of Hope? Why does it exist? Do we hope simply because it is a fantastical escapism from the painful realities of ordinary life? Or do we hope because we know, deep down within our hearts, that something is wrong with the world, that something isn’t quite right, that the life we’re living NOW isn’t the life that we were DESIGNED to live?

At one time I believed that hope found its source in man’s fantasies and imaginations, that hope was a cocktail of desire for something more and desire for less of what we have.

But I have been thinking about hope, and I believe that hope is something that is nestled deep within every human creature, a small element that speaks to us in whispers and dreams and fairy-tales, telling us that what we experience HERE and NOW is not what we were MEANT to experience. Hope tells us that there’s something missing within our universe, within our lives, within ourselves. It tells us that there is more to be grasped, that there is the possibility of a greater and more wonderful life, a kind of life that we were designed to experience.

Isn’t it odd that when you try to suffocate hope, hope refuses to die? It has been said that when you kill hope, you embrace resignation–the acceptance of fate as “an elegant, cold-hearted whore.” I don’t think that’s right. I think that when you try to kill hope, hope refuses to be killed. Because when you kill hope, you have killed everything within you that speaks of a greater world. And when you kill hope, the only permissible fate is suicide. Because without hope, we are left to understand the world as a brutal, unforgiving, relentless world where suffering reigns and happiness is an illusion. And if that understanding–as false as it may be–is called one’s own, then that person will, ultimately, kill him(her)self.

I didn’t throw myself from that bridge.

I went back to the car, got inside, and drove home.

I was suicidal for five more months.

Every day and every night I wept. I became a recluse, and I started cutting myself.
But never deep enough to drain my body of four pints of blood.

“What was it that kept me alive, what was it that kept me from drawing the knife against my wrist, kept me from tightening the noose around my neck, kept me from swallowing countless pills, kept me from driving my car at 90-mph into the median, kept me from throwing myself from that bridge?”

It was hope within me.

Small. Seemingly inconsequential.

But it was there.

And it showed itself in my tear-stained journals, daring to reveal itself through the pen.

Hope is a beautiful and dangerous and wonderful and painful thing.

It is hope that keeps us alive.

Christmas Break (I)

Monday. Before Faikham, Ams and I left Jessie’s house in Illinois, Jessie fixed us bacon, eggs, and biscuits for breakfast. We left her house by 1:30, dropped Faikham off in Forest Park, and then Ams took over for the rest of our drive home. It hasn’t been cold today, due to the absence of wind (six degrees is better than -18!). Karen is back from Las Vegas; she was there for a week, her flight delayed because of an ice storm. Jess Lynn called me, and we talked late into the night.

Tuesday. I dreamt that Monica and I were cops and she was shot. It’s sad that she’s graduated and has moved home. She turned down the nannying position in Springboro; I don’t blame her. I published a scene from my book on my xanga, and Jess Lynn commented, “This is absolutely beautiful. Publish this. This is the happy ending you need to write more often.” The washing machine is frozen because of the cold, so I had to laundry at the Springboro Laundromat. We opened Christmas presents this evening. I got a printer and a camera. Mom ordered pizza for dinner, and I polished it off with a beer. Quote of the Day: “Family Night is really Let’s Do What Mom Wants to Do Tonight.” Dad and Ams thought it was hilarious.

Christmas Eve ’08. I talked to Jessie for a while last night. I already miss her. I woke at 10:00 and went to Speedway for cigarettes and coffee. Mom, Dad, Ams and I headed to New Carlisle to celebrate Christmas with Dad’s side of the family. We always do it on Christmas Eve, a family tradition. Christmas is always tough for me. Megan had her baby Kate and she brought her to the gathering. Kate is beautiful, absolutely beautiful. And though I am happy for Joel and Megan, it’s a reminder of all that’s happened. Courtney and I had sex for the first time on March 21—no, the 29^th—and she got pregnant. Three months later she had a miscarriage; one of the reasons our relationship plummeted near the end. Our child would’ve been due in December, and this would have been our baby’s first (or second) Christmas. The event traumatized me, and I told no one. I never even acknowledged it in my journals. Just skimmed over it. Well, I did tell one person: Jess Lynn. She was comforting and sympathetic.

Christmas ’08. I didn’t sleep well last night, and I woke early. I enjoyed my ritualistic morning coffee and cigarette. It’s warm today, the sun’s shining, and the birds (shouldn’t they be south by now?) were singing in the trees. Mom, Dad, Ams and I headed to Kentucky to celebrate Christmas. We ate dinner at Grandma’s, and then Alex, Eric, Ams and I went to Jesse’s house. Jared’s gone until tomorrow. Jesse’s basement is finished. He even put in a bar. I took two shots—blackberry Smirnoff vodka and bicardi rum—and had a margarita with 1800 tequila.

Friday. I dreamt that Jessie and I were dating. Kyle thinks I have a thing for him; maybe he’s right? I don’t think so. Corey made coffee this morning, and then the whole extended family came over to Jesse’s. Uncle Bill fixed shrimp and steak for dinner, and we had lots of wine. The old roommate, Kevin, is gone, and he’s been replaced by Jared Sims. He had a bunch of people over, and they crowded the basement. Jesse, Jared, Ams, Mandy, Ashley, Corey and I hung out upstairs by the Christmas tree for a while, and then I curled up with Boozer and Bailey (Sim’s beagle) and passed out.

Saturday. I dreamt I went to a party in Delhi; I didn’t know anyone there except Courtney, and she invited me there. When I got there, she was with Kyle C., all up on him and rubbing it in my face. She told me, “My life has come together. I’m in love and getting married. How’s your life going? Where’s your future headed?” I woke up sad. Uncle Don, Aunt Susan, Eric & Alex left this morning, heading back home to Atlanta. Dad & Ams took my Prizm back home. Mom and I went to ½ Price Books and I got the game Call of Duty for my laptop. Uncle Bill, Aunt Teri, and Mom came over to the house. We celebrated Christmas (I got lots of money!) and we drank a lot. Mom had six tequila shots. Corey’s brother got wasted, and at 3 AM Sims arrived with two girls on his arms.

Sunday. Bailey kept waking me up all night, crawling onto the sofa. Mom, Grandma, Aunt Teri and I went shopping. I got three new pairs of jeans, a new coat, two bookends, and two IPOD players. Jesse went to Mandy’s place for the night, so Boozer and I slept in his bed.

on sad stories

Some friends and I went to see the movie Twilight last night. The theater was packed, mostly with preteen girls who kept clapping and cheering whenever handsome guys appeared on screen (so annoying). The movie was all right: it was a romance story about a human girl falling in love with a vampire boy, and the vampire boy must overcome his thirst for her blood in order to be with her. I told my friend Jessica, “Five years ago I had a romance story nearly identical to that one. I guess I should have written and published it.” She said, “Definitely.” I then proceeded to tell her, “My version didn’t have a happy ending. It was a romance story, but it turned out that the girl fell in love with the vampire boy, but the boy was actually deceiving her so that he and his family could torture and then consume her as dietary sustenance.” She told me that I need to start writing stories with happy endings. The thing is, that’s quite difficult for me. A week ago, Jessica and I were swapping stories made-up on the spot. Her story was quite romantic with a fantastic happy ending. Mine was a tragedy with a happy ending. She said, “Your happy ending sucked. But the sad part was amazing.” For some reason, and I’m not quite sure why, sad and depressing and tragic stories are much easier for me to write. Perhaps it’s because sadness, depression, and tragedy—with quite the speckling of irony—has been the definition of my life thus far. “Maybe one day,” I told Jessica, “if my dreams become reality, then my stories will have happy endings.” My two favorite authors—Cormac McCarthy and Ernest Hemmingway—are quite nihilistic or at the least naturalistic in their writing; while my worldview does not align with any of those, my writing reflects those worldviews. Perhaps there is a hint of truth to Hemmingway’s statement: “Every true story ends in death.”

hungering for more

As I look at my mundane, unexciting, run-of-the-mill life, I can’t help but hunger for more. Hunger for life. For vitality. For a new kind of blood to course through my veins. I want so much more than I have now. I’m not talking about material possessions. I’m talking about the quality of life that I live. I want more, life abundant and beautiful, a life that seems more like an orchestra or ballet or rave than waiting at the doctor’s office till they invite you in and tell you that you have some type of incurable disease. I have a frightening nightmare every now and then: I’m twenty-five years old, sitting at a bar, throwing down shots and smoking a cigarette, drowning out my misery and suffocating in regret. I want so much more than I have now. But this is life: what you want, you can’t have; what you have is taken away; and happiness is as fleeting as the spring rains. Or maybe this is cynicism. Maybe my idea of being a realist is just self-deception. Maybe I need to pull some unknown mask from over my eyes, or at least see the world through a different lens. I have sought happiness in achievements, in popularity, in wealth, in romantic relationships. None of it offered happiness, and yet I constantly pursued happiness through those things. Each came with more stress, more anxiety, more emptiness. Right now I am wrestling with pursuing happiness down an avenue which promises no happiness but only more emptiness. Why is it that we as human beings are so apt to search for happiness and contentment in ways that glorify the self? Maybe here is the issue: when we seek happiness through our own glorification, we fail; and our failure is due to the fact that we exist not to glorify ourselves but to glorify Another. By seeking happiness through our own successes, our own achievements, our own accomplishments; or through our own wealth, our own prosperity, our own material possessions; or through our popularity, our fame, our social networking; or through any kind of relationships that caters to the need of the self instead of being outward focused; maybe by searching for happiness through these things we fail because we are not designed to glorify the self.